Bay Terrace Community Alliance President Warren Schreiber in December blogged on Patch that he filed the suit to prevent self-serving gerrymandering.

The New York Times reports it was inaction by legislators that led Judge Dora L. Irizarry to recommend that the redrawing of political maps be handled by a court-appointed official.

The Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research, referred to more commonly as the “LATFOR” committee, has not yet produced a map of Congressional districts, the Times pointed out

The timeline to produce those lines is more crunched than in past years.

Last month, the state bumped Congressional primaries up from September to June, to assure that troops stationed abroad will receive absentee ballots in time, reports the Times.

A Board of Elections flub up in 2010 brought ballots overseas to U.S. soldiers from Queens and other NYS counties too late for them to be received back by the initial deadline.

“As one of the plaintiffs bringing this action, I couldn’t be more pleased with the ruling of Judge Irizarry,” said Schreiber wrote on his Facebook page on Tuesday. “It’s a terrific decision,” he added.

Just when you think the Senate lines were gerrymandered, take a look at the funky Assembly lines and you’ll see another baby alien popping out of a stomach.

Vince Tabone, the Executive Vice Chair of The Queens County Republican Party ran for Assembly against Ed Braunstein in 2010 and lost, but the defeat wasn’t enough for the Democrats in charge of the Assembly LATFOR process. Vince Tabone has become a victim of political gerrymandering.

Tabone, a Bayside resident, lives with his family in a quaint home on 215th St, a sleepy tree-lined road with longtime residents. If the new lines become official, one side of 216th St. will be in the 26th A.D, where, coincidentally, Tabone ran for Assembly, and the other side will be designated in Rory Lancman’s 25th A.D.

Tabone's house pictured here with current Assembly lines in District 26.

Guess which side of the street Tabone’s residence could be located? It just so happens that his house is proposed for inclusion in the 25th A.D.

Tabone was not shocked at the proposed redistricting. “I looked at it and I wished I could say I was surprised, but after being in politics awhile you get a little cynical,” he said.

Tabone was redistricted from the ED’s where he did extremely well, but instead of crying foul he looks at the results of LATFOR as more of a wakeup call for civic-minded citizens. “It’s disappointing the people don’t have as much of a choice as they think they do,” said Tabone, adding, “The [Assembly] lines look as contorted as it did before, there’s only a minor change and in my case they cut me out of the district.”

This is Tabone's home under the proposed lines. His side of the street is in the 25th A.D.

Tabone was asked what was the lesson learned and he replied rhetorically, ”The people, they don’t realize how things are done. But what are you going to do? What’s my recourse to sue or appeal to Shelly Silver?”

Technically Tabone could rent an apartment in the 26th A.D and still run (to avoid carpet bagging charges), stay put and run this cycle, or if Rory Lancman takes out Turner there is a possibility to field a viable Republican candidate for the 25th A.D. But another run for Tabone seems unlikely. The road to Albany is cold and lonely and generally not an ideal job for a family man, especially for Tabone who hopes to continue his mission of supporting and developing the Queens County Republican Club.

Queens-Politics received an email from the Astoria GOP regarding our post of the map with regards to the newly created ‘Asian’ Majority District.

The kind reader answered our call to draw the district onto the map – and just like the email says – after completing the map overlay, “It looks pretty Asian,” particularly on the western edge of SD16 with a high concentration of green dots.

An interesting map by Eric Fischer highlights the racial and ethnic makeup of New York City based on the 2010 census. For comparative purposes it is illuminating to match it with the recently created “Asian Majority’ Senate District. We aren’t cartographers, but if this map is completely accurate it casts more doubt on how “Asian” the district really is.

Map Key: Red is White, Blue is Black, Green is Asian, Orange is Hispanic, Yellow is Other, and each dot is 25 residents.

If anyone can draw the LATFOR map onto this ethnic map, please email us at info@queens-politics.com

The countdown for the official lines to be redrawn and finally revealed is underway and some are screaming their heads off about the rumors filtering down from political insiders and anonymous sources.

One trend seems to be clear, there’s a rising tide against district lines that maximize the voting efficacy of underrepresented ethnic groups.

The following email was received from SEVENTY7SEVEN7@aol.com expressing outrage with the possibility that proposed maps by the Asian American Legal and Defense Fund and Education Fund will be taken seriously.

It is very peculiar how people from Korea, Burma, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Singapore, Thailand – just to name a few – are somehow regarded as having a collective interest to vote for an Asian candidate despite a divergence in political leanings.

Reapportioning lines based on ethnicity is predicated on the assumption that people are so naive they will vote on racial identification – and nothing else. This may be true for a lot of voters, but we here at Queens-Politics would like to give people the benefit of the doubt and hope that in the interest of facilitating a competitive field of grassroots candidates, the opponents of race based districts will lay down their sword to bridge the disconnect by compromise, while the electorate stands up and recognizes the importance of voting for a candidate on principal.

Messages like this must be carefully crafted because it walks a fine line. In other words, some well-meaning pundit could say, hey this smells a little xenophobic especially when these initiatives point to the Asian population as the prime example and invariably reference English dominance motifs like in the text below.

###

It is absolutely wrong to intentional separate any area to intentional increase any ethnic group, or Political Party group to make them more Dominate in any area.

Every one should oppose AALDEF to deliberately, intentional create an Asian Dominated area to solely increase Asian dominated districts, under the alleged claim to increase Asian Representation.

You don’t need any area redrawn to be dominated by any group or nationality to get fair representation.

AALDEF redistrict lines are to segregate all others from what ALLDEFF wants to create an Asian communities regardless of where they actually live. If Asians wanted to live in that area they would have moved into that area not another area.

Don’t allow AALDEF to have any influence to create other area’s to segregate other communities intentionally for only Asians.

All Elected Officials regardless of their Ethnic background are suppose to represent every one in their area fairly and therefore it is not necessary to change district lines to cater to the Asian community in other districts or any other group.

There is no need to allege or claim the need to create or redraw district lines to include other Asians from other districts to push group them in other areas to increase Asian numbers, so only Asian officials can get elected. Sounds extremely bias and intentional to segregate others out of their self created districts and should be illegal in every way.

AALDEF has destroyed Flushing community to segregate all others to only benefit their Asian community.

See Attachment. See how the Store signs were changed in Flushing, so no other nationality can read the signs or feel welcome in the stores and not recognize or display our primary English language in the United States of America. Do you want this to continue in to other areas created?

The solution is simply. Create or redraw district lines fairly. No one group, Ethnic nationality or Political affiliation to dominate any area to get a true variety of people with no dominance, therefore everyone is treated fairly by the Representative that is elected.

This forces people or groups to work together as a Community and not create segregated dominated Communities unfairly that only care about themselves. I recommend no more than 25% cap of any group, ethnic nationality or Political affiliation where possible.

The memo was written by Senate GOP lawyer Michael Carvin and argued that the methodology used uring the 2002 reapportionment, when applied to he current population, calls for the addition of a new seat.

“I continue to believe that this methodology is the most faithful to the Constitution,” Carvin wrote. “I note that if the 2002 methodology is again employed, the size of the New York State Senate will be increased to 63 senators.”

Reif said no decisions have been made about the location of a new district. Final maps for new Senate districts will be available by the end of the month, he added.

Democrats and good government groups have slammed the Republicans, saying there’s no legal justification for adding a new seat and the move was likely fueled by politics.

“As the calculations have been done for us, any way we look at it, it comes to 62,” said Susan Lerner of Common Cause, N.Y. “They don’t get to just decide to have 63.”

The Senate’s move is all-but certain to spark a court battle and could draw fire from Gov. Cuomo, who in his State of the State address Wednesday promised to veto any lines not created through “an independent redistricting process.”

Insiders note that adding a 63rd seat in the state Senate could make it easier for the GOP to retain their razor-thin majority in the upcoming elections and avoid any legislative chaos by ensuring one party would be in the majority – as opposed to now, with an even number of seats.

State lawmakers are redrawing their districts – and congressional districts – as part of a census-mandated rejiggering.